The Development of Selective Attention Orienting is an Agent of Change in Learning and Memory Efficacy

This study examined whether the developmental transition from facilitation‐based orienting mechanisms available very early in life to selective attention orienting (e.g., inhibition of return, IOR) promotes better learning and memory in infancy. We tested a single age group (4‐month‐olds) undergoing rapid development of attention orienting mechanisms. Infants completed a spatial cueing task designed to elicit IOR, in which cat or dog category exemplars consistently appeared in either the cued or noncued locations. Infants were subsequently tested on a visual paired comparison of exemplars from these cued and noncued animal categories. As expected, infants showed either facilitation‐based orienting or the more mature IOR‐based orienting during spatial cueing/encoding. Infants who demonstrated IOR‐based orienting showed memory for both specific exemplars and broader category learning, whereas those who showed facilitation‐based orienting showed weaker evidence of learning. Attention orienting also interacted with previous pet experience, such that the number of pets at home influenced learning only when infants engaged facilitation‐based orienting during encoding. Learning in the context of IOR‐based orienting was stable regardless of pet experience, suggesting that selective attention serves as an online learning mechanism during visual exploration that is less sensitive to prior experience.     

Income Distribution and Social Tolerance

Social tolerance, i.e. the tolerance for the intrinsic diversity of large social groups, can be viewed as a synergic effect of the features of both individuals and socio-economic environment. This paper proposes a twofold contribution to the literature. First, it advances a conceptual framework in which tolerance at individual levels is explained by social polarization—in the form of income distribution—and the perceived quality of the social relationships and structures. Second, the regression analysis—involving micro-data from World Values Survey covering a time span between 2010 and 2014, for 48 countries—provides robust evidences for a non-linear impact of income distribution on social tolerance. This impact appears to be U-shaped and displays a pronounced degree of asymmetry. Also, labour market position, education, class self-identification, gender, age, marital status, levels of individuals’ personal security and sharing of post-materialist values matter in explaining social tolerance. The same main determinants contribute to the formation of both social tolerance and social capital. The differences are related to the amplitude as well as to the degree of symmetry for the corresponding non-linear transmission channels.     

Development of Visual Selection in 3‐ to 9‐Month‐Olds: Evidence From Saccades to Previously Ignored Locations

We examined changes in the efficiency of visual selection over the first postnatal year with an adapted version of a spatial negative priming paradigm. In this task, when a previously ignored location becomes the target to be selected, responses to it are impaired, providing a measure of visual selection. Oculomotor latencies to target selection were the dependent measure. Each trial consisted of a prime and a probe presentation, separated by a 67‐, 200‐, or 550‐msec interstimulus interval (ISI), to test the efficiency of selection as a function of processing time. In the prime, the target was accompanied by a distractor item. In the probe, the target appeared either in the location formerly occupied by the distractor (repeated distractor trials) or in one of the other two locations (control trials). We tested 41 infants in each of 3 age groups (3, 6, and 9 months) on the three different ISIs. Nine‐month‐old infants' saccade latencies were slowed on repeated distractors relative to control trials, given sufficiently long ISIs. Saccade latencies in the youngest two age groups showed only facilitation on repeated distractor trials at short ISIs. These results suggest that visual selection efficiency is a function of the interaction of the processing limitations of a system with environmental conditions, in this case the time allotted for the selection process.     

Place attachment in disaster studies: measurement and the case of the 2013 Moore tornado

Population and Environment - Place attachment has gained considerable attention in disaster studies, though there is little consensus on how to conceptualize or measure this construct in...     

Where Infants Look Determines How They See: Eye Movements and Object Perception Performance in 3‐Month‐Olds

A fundamental question of perceptual development concerns how infants come to perceive partly hidden objects as unified across a spatial gap imposed by an occluder. Much is known about the time course of development of perceptual completion during the first several months after birth, as well as some of the visual information that supports unity perception in infants. The goal of this investigation was to examine the inputs to this process. We recorded eye movements in 3‐month‐old infants as they participated in a standard object unity task and found systematic differences in scanning patterns between those infants whose post‐habituation preferences were indicative of unity perception versus those infants who did not perceive unity. Perceivers, relative to nonperceivers, scanned more reliably in the vicinity of the visible rod parts and scanned more frequently across the range of rod motion. These results suggest that emerging object concepts are tied closely to available visual information in the environment, and the process of information pickup.     

Drivers of Corporate Social Responsibility Attitudes: The Demography of Socially Responsible Investors

Demographic characteristics of socially responsible investors (SRIs) are likely to play a significant role in shaping their perceptions and behaviour concerning corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper identifies demographic characteristics of SRIs and explores the relationship of these characteristics with their CSR attitudes. We analyse, using generalized ordered logistic regression, the questionnaire responses of 2464 SRIs from 20 countries. The results demonstrate that younger and female SRIs are more likely to believe that a company's social and environmental performance is as important as its financial performance. Female SRIs and those with high incomes are the most likely to believe that companies should be as responsible to their shareholders as to the broader society. In addition, younger SRIs, those with high incomes and those who have attained higher education levels regard socially responsible companies as at least as profitable as other companies. The benefits which companies can derive from understanding the demographic profile of SRIs are examined, including a potentially lower cost of capital, improved CSR rankings and business policy formulation and communication consistent with CSR views held by specific groups of SRIs.     

Small Business Social Responsibility: A Critical Multilevel Review,Synthesis and Research Agenda

Small‐business social responsibility (SBSR) related research is rapidly increasing in quantity, but is found in divergent literatures and disciplines. It is time to offer a comprehensive review that identifies, synthesizes and integrates previous research, and highlights the knowledge gaps and the way forward. This methodical search of the literature helped to identify 115 multidisciplinary peer‐reviewed academic articles appearing in high‐quality journals over the 1970–2016 period. Using a systematic and in‐depth content analysis technique, the authors reviewed the articles and identified the theories used, the national contextual focus and the methodological orientations in these articles. They also identified the predictors, outcomes, mediators and moderators of SBSR at the institutional, organizational and individual levels of analysis. This review helps to identify significant knowledge gaps in terms of the theoretical orientation, the national contextual focus, the core content under study, and the methods used. The authors offer numerous suggestions across these topics to help address the knowledge gaps and raise important questions for future research. The primary contributions of this paper are: delineating and summarizing a multilevel analysis of an emerging literature on SBSR; integrating contributions from a wide range of management disciplines and geographical contexts; extracting the potential theoretical contributions in this field; and informing directions for future research. The authors propose a research agenda that is theoretically relevant and innovative, and call for context‐ and size‐aware research on SBSR, using small‐business‐specific methodologies and measurements.     

The emergence of object‐based visual attention in infancy: A role for family socioeconomic status and competing visual features

The development of spatial visual attention has been extensively studied in infants, but far less is known about the emergence of object‐based visual attention. We tested 3–5‐ and 9–12‐month‐old infants on a task that allowed us to measure infants’ attention orienting bias toward whole objects when they competed with color, motion, and orientation feature information. Infants’ attention orienting to whole objects was affected by the dimension of the competing visual feature. Whether attention was biased toward the whole object or its salient competing feature (e.g., “ball” or “red”) changed with age for the color feature, with infants biased toward whole objects with age. Moreover, family socioeconomic status predicted feature‐based attention in the youngest infants and object‐based attention in the older infants when color feature information competed with whole‐object information.     

Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries as an Emerging Field of Study

Given the rising interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) globally, its local expressions are as varied as they are increasingly visible in both developed and developing countries. This paper presents a multilevel review of the literature on CSR in developing countries and highlights the key differentiators and nuanced CSR‐related considerations that qualify it as a distinctive field of study. This review entails a content analysis of 452 articles spanning two‐and‐a‐half decades (1990–2015). Based on this comprehensive review, the authors identify the key differentiating attributes of the literature on CSR in developing countries in relation to depictions of how CSR is conceived or ‘CSR Thinking’ and depictions of how CSR is practiced and implemented or ‘CSR Doing’. The authors synthesize from there five key themes that capture the main aspects of variation in this literature, namely: (1) complex institutional antecedents within the national business system (NBS); (2) complex macro‐level antecedents outside the NBS; (3) the salience of multiple actors involved in formal and informal governance; (4) hybridized and other nuanced forms of CSR expressions; and (5) varied scope of developmental and detrimental CSR consequences. The paper concludes by accentuating how the nuanced forms of CSR in the developing world are invariably contextualized and locally shaped by multi‐level factors and actors embedded within wider formal and informal governance systems.     

Validity of the microsoft kinect system in assessment of compensatory stepping behavior during standing and treadmill walking

Background

Rapid compensatory stepping plays an important role in preventing falls when balance is lost; however, these responses cannot be accurately quantified in the clinic. The Microsoft Kinect? system provides real-time anatomical landmark position data in three dimensions (3D), which may bridge this gap.

Methods

Compensatory stepping reactions were evoked in 8 young adults by a sudden platform horizontal motion on which the subject stood or walked on a treadmill. The movements were recorded with both a 3D-APAS motion capture and Microsoft Kinect? systems. The outcome measures consisted of compensatory step times (milliseconds) and length (centimeters). The average values of two standing and walking trials for Microsoft Kinect? and the 3D-APAS systems were compared using t-test, Pearson’s correlation, Altman-bland plots, and the average difference of root mean square error (RMSE) of joint position.

Results

The Microsoft Kinect? had high correlations for the compensatory step times (r?=?0.75–0.78, p?=?0.04) during standing and moderate correlations for walking (r?=?0.53–0.63, p?=?0.05). The step length, however had a very high correlations for both standing and walking (r?>?0.97, p?=?0.01). The RMSE showed acceptable differences during the perturbation trials with smallest relative error in anterior-posterior direction (2-3%) and the highest in the vertical direction (11–13%). No systematic bias were evident in the Bland and Altman graphs.

Conclusions

The Microsoft Kinect? system provides comparable data to a video-based 3D motion analysis system when assessing step length and less accurate but still clinically acceptable for step times during balance recovery when balance is lost and fall is initiated.